This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Animating type tracking

Next, you’ll animate the appearance of the director’s name in the composition. This time, you’ll use a text animation tracking preset. By animating tracking you can make words appear to expand outward as they appear on-screen from a central point.

Customizing placeholder text

Currently, the director’s name is simply a layer with placeholder text—Your Name Here. Before you animate it, change it to
your own name.

Switch to the credits Timeline panel and select the Your Name Here layer.

Note

It doesn’t matter where the current-time indicator is located when you edit the text of this layer. Currently, the text is
on-screen for the duration of the composition. That will change once you animate it.

Using the Horizontal Type tool (), replace Your Name Here in the Composition panel with your own name. Use a first, middle, and last name so that you have a nice long string of text
to animate. Press Enter on the numeric keypad when you’re done.

Again, the layer name doesn’t change, because it was named in Photoshop.

Applying a tracking preset

Now you will animate the director’s name with a tracking preset so that it starts to appear on-screen shortly after the words directed by reach the center of the composition.

Go to 7:10.

Select the Your Name Here layer in the Timeline panel.

Jump to Bridge and go to the Presets > Text > Tracking folder. Locate the Increase Tracking preset and double-click it to apply it to the Your Name Here layer in After Effects.

Note

If you’re tired of jumping to Bridge and don’t care to preview the preset, simply type Increase Tracking in the Contains field of the Effects & Presets panel. Then, double-click it to apply it to the selected layer in the Timeline panel.

Drag the current-time indicator across the time ruler between 7:10 and 9:10 to manually preview the tracking animation.

Customizing the tracking preset

The text expands on-screen, but you need the letters to initially be so close they’re that they’re on top of each other, and
then expand to a reasonable, readable distance apart. You also want it the animation to occur faster. You can adjust the Tracking
Amount to fix both of these problems.

Select the Your Name Here layer in the Timeline panel and press UU to reveal the properties that were modified by the preset.

Go to 7:10.

Under Animator 1, change the Tracking Amount to –5 so that the letters are squeezed together.